i was trying to think of something particularly insightful to write about what it is like to sit in complete darkness and observe the night sky ... and then i remembered that years ago calvin & hobbes said it as well as i ever could: " if people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, i bet they'd live a lot differently. when you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day." (calvin & hobbes spitting the hard truth). ..this photo was taken last week, shortly after midnight on my 30th birthday. i have never been one confident in dabbling with a tripod, but after setting up my tent i got it out and a random passerby spent an hour and taught me how to capture the night sky. the roadtrip trip, ultimately just shy of three weeks in length, was full of these types of fortuitous encounters that led me into conversations and down paths that i could not have planned or anticipated. joshua tree national park 12:17 am 08.19.2017